Hi everybody!

I'm home again – for the next week and a half, anyway; and it's just as well, for I am outrageously sick. I honestly can't tell if this is allergies (quite severe for me out here on the West Coast) or some illness that has arisen in the wake of those catastrophic allergies, combined with copious jet lag. It doesn't matter much. I'm popping the same fistfuls of antihistamines and decongestants, regardless.

Not that anything really seems to work.

To those of you who might, at this point, be tempted to chime in offering helpful suggestions or remedies … I'd ask you to lift your hands from the keyboard immediately and back slowly away. Trust me when I tell you that I've had allergies of some variety or another my entire life, I've been tested and treated multiple times in multiple fashions, and I've tried almost everything from hardcore prescriptions to my-grandma-used-to-use-this-folk-cure. But because no matter how much I assert or insist that I'm not trawling for advice when I post such things, and someone always suggests it: Yes I have a neti pot. Yes I use it. Yes it helps, about as much as anything else (read: minimally).

Kindly trust me to have explored a vast variety of venues and options, thanks.

There is, in fact, a chance that I might be able to visit a proper allergist sometime in the semi-near future – and yes, I am interested in the vaccination system that so many people find effective (if tedious). But I can't do that on my present health insurance, which is roughly the equivalent of having nothing but liability coverage on a car. So that's gotta wait.

Anyway. Like I said I'm back in town through the middle of next week, when I'll head to Phoenix … and after that, I have no plans to go anyplace at all until September.* No one is happier about this than me, I tell you what.

Well, actually, that might not be true. The kitty has been obsessively co-dependent ever since I returned. Case in point: I woke up around dawn with the ferocious sneezes, so I wandered into the bathroom to take a nice hot steamy shower and see if that'd loosen up the goop in my head. When I emerged, I found rolled-up sock balls all over the hallway. Apparently Spain the Cat had been sitting outside the bathroom door, howling her head off … until Aric the Husband decided he couldn't take it anymore and started hurtling projectiles at her.**

(Rolled-up sock balls are our traditional weapons of choice against ill-behaved felines. I'm clinically blind and couldn't hit a nearby lion, much less a distant housecat; but I can startle the heck out of her and chase her off. And as for the husband, his aim is no better than mine. Though he's capable of throwing harder than I can – he wakes up more slowly, and it balances out.)

So now it's Sunday afternoon, and never mind all the work I needed to catch up on this weekend. I didn't get a damn thing done, as I have spent the majority of my time back (from SF on Friday evening) lying around moaning, slurping NyQuil, testing different forms of Breathe-Rite strips, and soaking slug-like in the bathtub – not hearing the objections of adjacent kitties.

Tomorrow I have a day-job thing that absolutely can't be put off, but after that, I'm going to hunker down with Red Bull and the decongestants people use to make meth and barrel through the edits on Ganymede. Which are late. But such is life.

I suppose that catches you up on just about everything.

Now I'm going to log off, grab a glass of wine and another round of pills, and watch TV until I pass out. Wee!

* Will likely end up back in California for the day-job face-time, but that's the sort of travel I don't mind half so much. The flight is short, the work is interesting, and it's in my own time zone and everything!

** Under ordinary circumstances, she'll push at the bathroom door – and if it's not shut good, she'll let herself inside to see what you're up to. But she lives in fear and loathing of running water, and if you turn on the faucet or the tub, she contents herself to wait quietly outside until you emerge.

[Crossposted from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]